Do we really need a law on marital rape?

The father of Taoism, Lao Tzu’s sayings
seem to make much relevance today. He said, “The more laws and order are
made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.” This is
exactly what is happening in the marital scenario in India. There are
too many laws and all of them are unanimously loathed against men. None
of them provide any kind of remedy to a distressed and victimized man.
Instead, they leave no stone unturned in criminalizing an innocent man.

First
we had the Section 125 CrPC which made men pay maintenance to their
wives, children and parents irrespective of whether a man’s
wife/children/parents take care of him or not; the man will be treated
as a free ATM machine in all probability and would be forced to maintain
the very people who would abuse him.

Then came the notorious and draconian dowry law aka the
Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code which was non-bailable,
cognizable and non-compoundable. Cutting long story short and putting it
in layman’s terms, this section provided for immediate arrest of a
husband and his family, based on the wife’s complaint even without trial
or investigation.
Enter the Domestic Violence Act (D.V. Act),
which was so badly drafted that it left no scope for a man to prove him
innocent therein, if a case is filed against him. Neither were any
offenses properly defined nor was any care taken to abide by principles
of natural justice in the law.

Interestingly, when the debate for
D.V. Act was going on, woman organizations claimed that, now cases under
section 498A would reduce and, D.V. Act would serve as a single window
for all matrimonial disputes. However, it did not happen. As usual, the
woman organizations were lying and fooling the society, which is more
than ready to be fooled by them.

Every matrimonial dispute had
both 498A and D.V. Act filed against the husband. This only increased
the pressure on the husband to settle the case out of court which
clearly meant paying hefty ransom money to the wife who would file false
cases at her whim and fancy and then demand alimony to the tune of
crores of rupees.

As if this unabated financial, legal and social
exploitation of innocent men wasn’t enough, now the media and woman
organizations are proposing yet another anti-male provision in the form
of “Marital Rape”.

However, few very important questions need to
be raised before we even think of bringing in the new legislation
containing provisions for penalizing the husband when a wife complains
of marital rape.

1. When 498A and D.V. Act already have provisions for sexual abuse, what is the need of a separate law?

2. Will it not lead to multiplicity of litigation in divorce cases increasing the burden on the already burdened courts?

3. Will it not accelerate the formation of a marriage-less and father-less society?

4. Why not scrap 498A and D.V. Act before bringing in the legislation?

5.
How did the issue of marital rape suddenly become so relevant for the
media whence the whole issue of amending sexual assault laws began with
the 16 December incident in Delhi which, in itself is a rarest of the rare cases?

6. Will any woman organization care to answer the above questions to the satisfaction of all sections of the society?

7.
Are woman organizations meant only to shout and spread anti-male
messages, and do fear-mongering and hate-mongering in the society?

8.
Are they not supposed to take some semblance of responsibility and
accountability for the illogical demands they make and the disastrous
consequences that enthrall upon the society, especially men?

9. Who has given them the authority to waste tax payers’ hard earned money for satiating their personal vendetta against men?

10.
When they haven’t taken any responsibility for the misuse of Section
498A and D.V. Act in the past and taken any corrective action for the
same, will it be a sane move to bring in yet another more draconian law
and assume there wouldn’t be any misuse or social backlash against the
same?

Questions are galore, answers are elusive. And while the
woman organizations choose to answer these questions, if they may so
wish to, I would like to bring up some more serious issues pertaining to
marital rape.

Definition of Consent:

Firstly, the very
technical definition of rape is sex against consent. Secondly, sex
between spouses is a very integral part of marriage. So, invariably sex
will be involved in a marriage and in the absence of a concrete and
objective definition of consent with regards to marital rape, this
provision can become a serious candidate for misuse.

Whenever, a
woman would want to break out of marriage, all she needs to say is, “He
forced himself onto me, saying that I am his wife and I have to submit
to him”. It’s over, marital rape is registered and overnight, the
husband becomes a rapist!

There would absolutely be no way to
determine the correctness of the issue. Because in the absence of a
definition of consent even physical injury is not needed; for when one
defines the subjugation of consent subject to the essence of a
relationship, quintessentially we are saying, consent is automatically
provided and whimsically withdrawn.

Women organizations are not
interested in intellectual debate around the issue, nor do they want to
provide any tangible or scientific data to testify and support their
claims. All they want to do is hooliganism on TV channels, make a lot of
noise and get things done without taking any responsibility. It the
collective responsibility of the society and the Govt. to stop promoting
such socially disastrous elements, rather than giving into their
histrionics and passing insane laws.

One more important and
critical issue which has been missed out in the entire social discourse
pertaining to the issue of marital rape is that of “Marital Rape of
Men”.

When women organizations are saying that “Marriage is not a
guarantee for lifetime sex”, then this premise applies to both men and
women and who will protect men from forced sex in marriages i.e. who
will protect men from marital rape in marriages?

1. What if a wife forces a man to do oral sex against his wish?

2.
What if a wife forces a man to have sex with him in order to have
children even when the man is not prepared to father them?

3.
What if a wife has more sex hunger than the man and she keeps on
demanding sex from the man against his wish, mood and energy?

4.
What if a wife forces a man to have sex with him using derogatory terms
like impotent, eunuch (hijra), gay, sissy, faggot, unmanly, etc.?

5. What if a wife threatens to file a case of marital rape, or for that matter, any case, if he doesn’t satisfy her?

6.
What, if a man is forced to have sex with his wife under the threat
that she will commit suicide if he doesn’t have sex with her?

Above
scenarios is a tip of the iceberg of the various types of sexual abuse
that men undergo in marriages and survive without protection. But if,
the marital rape law is passed in its current form, as suggested by the
woman organizations, then who will take care of male victims of rapes?

While
the onus and responsibility of protecting men does not fall upon the
women organizations, but it does fall upon the government, which is duty
bound to protect every citizen and every class of citizens irrespective
of gender, caste, creed and sexual orientation. And hence, the
government must exercise extreme caution into blindly listening to these
anti-male and male hater women organizations, who operate with a
mindset of hatred towards men and seem to be more concerned of depriving
men of their rights than to ensure women getting their rights.

Already,
enough social damage has been done because the government blindly
listened to these women organizations and millions of innocent men and
women have been thrown behind bars under false cases of Section 498A.
The government must not contribute to this figure more by bringing in
further blind measures which are driven by stereotypes and assumptions.

And
even if the government does so, it must provide a foolproof mechanism
for preventing false cases and ensure that the law is not misused even
in a single case. And the government must also provide compensation to
those individuals who are victims of false cases and have been wrongly
arrested.

All those families, whose members have been arrested
wrongly, in false cases, must be given Rs. 50 Lakhs as compensation and
this amount must be deducted from the budget allocated to women
organizations as they are directly responsible for this injustice.

We
are inviting extreme social dangers by making another anti-male law by
including marital rape which does not even define consent properly. It’s
time to make wise choices and not be driven by noise and ill-logic.